Homepage of Erik Poll I am associate professor in the Digital Security (DiS) research group of ICIS, the Institute for Computing and Information Science, at the Faculty of Science of Radboud University. Address and contact information

(photo by Sjoerd van der Hucht)

Research

• My papers, and also reachable via Google scholar and the Radboud University Repository
• Slides of some talks and pointers to media attention.

I do research on software security, especially for security protocols such as TLS, SSH and EMV, as well as more applied security research on e.g. internet banking, smartcards, RFID tags, TEEs, e-passports, Android, EU identity wallets, the MIME standard for email attachments, smart grids (including smart meters and EV charging), automotive systems and the use of AI in education.

Most cybersecurity problems originate in software and my research aims to improve security in software engineering through more rigorous and systematic approaches such as formal methods, type systems, model-based testing, fuzzing, protocol state fuzzing and the LangSec approach to secure input handling.

Earlier I worked on program specification and verification for Java and Java Card and the design of the formal specification language JML. research into (Java Card) smartcards and into RFID in our research group resulted in some open-source smartcard software and RFID tools.

Some outliers, topic-wise: with Tommy Koens I wrote some papers analysing the (almost invariably flawed) reasons for thinking that blockchain might be a sensible solution for anything and my former PhD student Alex Serban looked at adversarial attacks on AI systems.

My current PhD students are Seyed Benham Andarzian, Cristian Daniele, Job Doesburg, Patrick Lodeweegs and Faiz Muhammad.

Teaching

• Web Security (IPC026)
• Software Security (ISOFSE) - for this course I created lecture notes on Language-Based Security and Secure Input Handling and some demo webpages to ilustrate to complexity of encoding and sanitising data in web applications.
• Security Protocol Project (IMC066)

The master courses I teach are part of the Cyber Security, Cyber Security and AI, and Software Science specialisations in our Computing Science Master. The bachelor courses are part of the cybersecurity track in our Computing Science Bachelor.

Other teaching-related stuff:

• Our local CTF student team, also on Discord.
• NymaCon, aka HackNijmegen
• Some external organisations for doing your thesis or research internships.
• Before handing in any draft versions of a thesis or internship report, check my writing checklist
• Onderwijsmateriaal over cybersecurity voor middelbare scholen (in Dutch)
• Introductory exercises using Uppaal: model checking for dummies
• Exercises using JML and ESC/Java2

Organisation and projects

• I am confidential contact person for PhD students at ICIS.
• For ACCSS our group hosts the ACCSS mailing list and I maintain the ACCSS announcements on Mastodon.
• Secure Software Development (SSD) group of CIP-overheid
• Challenge the Cyber, the foundation that organises the national Dutch CTF as qualifier for the annual European Cyber Security Challenge
• OWASP Netherlands, the Dutch chapter of OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project)
• I co-authored the Dutch National Cyber Security Research Agenda (NSCRA III)
• Thema center Security of Next Generation Infrastructure

Conferences, workshops and other events

• LangSec workshop at IEEE Security & Privacy
• AFFECT.NL workshop on Automated Finding, Fixing or Exploiting of seCuriTy vulnerabilities, by INTERSECT and the ACCSS working group on Software Security
• Workshop on Stateful Analysis of Network Protocols (StANP), Paris, July 2026
• I used to organise the FTfJP (Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs) workshop. The workshop is still going strong but I'm no longer involved since 2016.

Projects

• Find2Fix, funded by NWO in KIC Digital Resilience programme, 2025-2029
• NOLAI (Nationaal Onderwijslab AI), funded by National Growth Fund, 2022-2032
• INTERSECT (Internet of Secure Things), funded by NWO as part of NWA (Nationale WetenschapsAgenda), 2020-2028
• iCAVE (Integrated cooperative automated vehicles), 2017-2021, Perspectief project funded by NWO TTW
• Charge & Go, 2017-2021, funded by EFRO
• Betuwse Energie Samenwerking, 2017-2021, funded by EFRO